We did it! With fantastic, community-wide support, we managed to win an historic election for Seattle School Board.

Election night, we led by 51-48 percent, and with each day’s new ballot tallies, our margin has grown. As of this afternoon, the results are 53-46—a 7-point difference. Wednesday night, my opponent, Suzanne Dale Estey, conceded.

[UPDATE: I have just updated the results to reflect the new numbers posted by King County Elections at 4:30 p.m. today. My margin has grown to 7 percent.]

This is a victory not only for my campaign, but for communities, families, and educators everywhere who are the key stakeholders in public education, but whose voices are not always heard in the current national debate over education reform, or in our own local school district policies.

This is also a victory for authentic, grassroots democracy. Seattle voters did not allow a small group of moneyed interests to buy this election. My opponent’s campaign and political action committee (PAC) spent a record-breaking $240,000+, a good portion of it on negative campaigning. This amount of money and such tactics are unprecedented in Washington State for a school board race. Yet voters were not fooled by the distortions and diversions of the PAC which attempted to smear my candidacy.

I am proud of my fiscally responsible, volunteer-driven campaign. I am also grateful to everyone who helped us stand up to this barrage of misinformation, and to those of you who promoted my candidacy personally. I want to particularly thank Dr. Diane Ravitch, who recognized that my campaign represented a national battle over the integrity and future of public education. Her support gave important legitimacy to our campaign and to my effort over the years to engage on education issues, as both a journalist and parent.

I have already begun to reach out to my opponent’s supporters. To those who share my commitment to public education, I welcome both discussion and action on the issues raised by my campaign, and I am committed to work together to meet the needs of all our students without resorting to privatization models.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to serve as your elected representative. I promise to be engaged on the issues and represent all of my constituents who share the goal of strengthening our public schools. I am committed to serving the best interests of all our district’s 51,000 diverse students, families and school communities.

It might look like this:Sue Peters

Sue Peters has a solid track record in education advocacy, not only at the school level working in her children’s classrooms and schools for the past 9 years, but at the community level, with recent work on two district task forces, as a co-founder of the Seattle Math Coalition and the Seattle Education Blog, and at the national level as an education journalist and founding member of Parents Across America. Peters is the only candidate in the race with extensive, recent experience with the Seattle School District, and has researched and written about local and national public education policy for the past five years, as a professionally trained journalist with a Master’s degree in Communication from Stanford University. Peters has two children who have attended district schools for the past 10 years.

Source: PDC reports through 8/19/2013, includes independent Political Action Committee (PAC) and in-kind donations. Certified election returns as of 8/20/2013.

The resultsare in, and my campaign finished the primary with nearly 43 percent of the vote in a three-way race. After garnering 41 percent on election night, my margin gradually rose while my opponent’s gradually decreased. The final numbers give her only a 4.5 percent lead. It’s all pretty incremental and the final tally is quite close.

What isn’t close is how much money we spent on our campaigns and how we chose to get out the vote. My opponent outspent me by 8:1, paying political consultants to help her craft her message and campaign. My community-based, all-volunteer campaign spent roughly 77 cents per vote; my opponent’s campaign spent roughly $6 per vote.

In contrast, my volunteers and I opted to encourage voters to vote for me, with truthful information and 100 percent volunteer, grassroots support.

Fiscal Responsibility Begins with My Campaign

I believe that fiscal responsibility begins right here, with my campaign. As we all know, our schools are woefully underfunded and our state is not meeting its paramount duty to fully fund K-12 public education. Making smart use of limited resources is a crucial skill every school board director will need, and I am demonstrating my commitment to this principle with my campaign.

Trying to buy your way into winning an election is one strategy. Earning votes through true community engagement and fact-based ideas and solutions is my strategy.